The Dean Martin Christmas Album
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| The Dean Martin Christmas Album | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | October 1966[1] | |||
| Recorded | September 1966 | |||
| Genre | Christmas, traditional pop, jazz | |||
| Label | Reprise - R/RS 6222 | |||
| Producer | Jimmy Bowen | |||
| Dean Martin chronology | ||||
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The Dean Martin Christmas Album is a 1966 studio album by Dean Martin arranged by Ernie Freeman and Bill Justis.[2]
This was Martin's only album of Christmas music released on Reprise Records (his only other Christmas album, A Winter Romance, having been released in 1959 on Capitol Records). It was reissued on CD by Hip-O Records in 2008, retitled A Very Cool Christmas.[2]
This was the fourth of five albums Martin released in 1966.[1] Billboard magazine reported in its December 3, 1966 issue that The Dean Martin Christmas Album was on top of its "Best Bets for Christmas" chart.[3]
The release of The Dean Martin Christmas Album in October and The Dean Martin TV Show in November 1966 were accompanied by what Billboard described as a "merchandising avalanche"[4] by Reprise Records and their parent company Warner Music.[4] Billboard described Martin as running the "hottest streak of his career", and said that Reprise planned to sell $4 million of his records over the Christmas sales period.[4] Billboard later reported that Martin had sold 850,000 albums in December 1966.[5]
Ricci James Martin, Martin's son, wrote in a biography of his father that The Dean Martin Christmas Album was the only one of his father's albums that was played in the Martin household; his parents seldom listened to Dean Martin's music.[6]
Reception
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    [2] |
Reviewing A Very Cool Christmas (a 2008 CD reissue of the Dean Martin Christmas Album) on Allmusic.com, William Ruhlmann gave the album three and a half stars out of five. Ruhlmann commented that Martin was in a "typically easygoing, good-natured mood on these tracks...He sings the seasonal material with the same nonchalance he gave to pop music of the period".[2]
Track listing
- "White Christmas" (Irving Berlin) – 2:55
- "Jingle Bells" (James Pierpont)
- "I'll Be Home for Christmas" (Kim Gannon, Walter Kent, Buck Ram)
- "Blue Christmas" (Billy Hayes, Jay W. Johnson) – 2:17
- "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne) – 1:57
- "A Marshmallow World" (Peter DeRose, Carl Sigman) – 2:44
- "Silver Bells" (Ray Evans, Jay Livingston)
- "Winter Wonderland" (Felix Bernard, Richard B. Smith)
- "The Things We Did Last Summer" (Cahn, Styne) – 2:42
- "Silent Night" (Franz Gruber, Josef Mohr)
